Equifax suffered a hack 5 months earlier than disclosed date

WASHINGTON: Equifax Inc learned about a major breach of its computer systems in March — almost five months before the date it has publicly disclosed, according to three people familiar with the situation.

In a statement, the company said the March breach was not related to the hack that exposed the personal and financial data on 143 million US consumers, but one of the people said the breaches involve the same intruders.

Either way, the revelation that the 118-year-old credit-reporting agency suffered two major incidents in the span of a few months adds to a mounting crisis at the company, which is the subject of multiple investigations and announced the retirement of two of its top security executives on Friday.

Equifax hired the security firm Mandiant on both occasions and may have believed it had the initial breach under control, only to have to bring the investigators back when it detected suspicious activity again on July 29, two of the people said.

Equifax’s hiring of Mandiant the first time was unrelated to the July 29 incident, the company spokesperson said. Vitor De Souza, senior vice president for global marketing at FireEye Inc, Mandiant’s parent company, declined to comment.

The revelation of a March breach will complicate the company’s efforts to explain a series of unusual stock sales by Equifax executives. If it’s shown that those executives did so with the k n owl e d g e that either or both breaches could damage the company, they could be vulnerable to charges of insider trading.

The US Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the stock sales, according to people familiar with the probe. Equifax has said the executives had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred when the transactions were made.